Falter
by Peanut-Alien-Ninja-Girl
Summary: Sasuke's resolve was unwavering, and he was set on his goals more than he had ever been before, so how could her words make him falter? [Inspired by chapter 693, Sasuke-centric]


Sasuke faltered.

Inwardly, he cursed the girl standing behind him, once more trying to reach out to him, once more trying to understand what led him to his actions, once more trying to stop him.

And once more, she would fail.

She didn't understand him, never would, and yet he couldn't blame her for that. If he thought Naruto could not reach him, no matter how much the idiot tried, then Sakura was even further from him.

She should have gotten the hint by now, should have gotten over this infatuation with him, but it seemed it wasn't that easy.

So she loved him – still did? After all those years, hell, after he tried to _murder_ her, he thought she would have finally realized that he was far too gone, and no amount of love that she or anyone else tried to shove at him could change that.

Kakashi, Sakura and Naruto likely couldn't help the way they thought about him, _the way they felt about him_, but those were the hard facts.

He had changed his views, and rather than wishing to destroy what had harmed him, he sought to reform it, but changes weren't as simple as Naruto would like to believe. Sacrifices had to be made, and some things were broken beyond fixing, like Konoha's past, The Shinobi System, and himself.

Some part of him had probably always known that things would come to that.

He wasn't eager to kill Naruto as a person, to rid the world of that obnoxious, loud and _annoying_ ray on sunshine that he had once held as a brother, somehow. He didn't want to kill _Naruto_, but what he stood for and what he represented, even unwittingly.

What he hadn't foreseen was that Sakura would confess to him again, in the hopes of keeping him from going down the path that – unbeknownst to her – he had treaded for so far that he had no hopes of returning.

And that was all because she _loved_ him still.

Sakura had changed, that much became clear to him when he had seen her in the battlefield, yet he had, perhaps foolishly, presumed that those changes ran deeper than they really did. Somehow, inside that powerhouse that could smash through boulders, she was still the same girl who had cried and begged him to take her with him, to have her help him enact his revenge just so she could be by his side.

He hadn't given into her requests then, and he wouldn't give into them now. He wondered if she thought she had any skills that could be useful to him… or if she thought him incredibly selfish to be so willing to destroy her life like that.

Sakura couldn't understand him, she never would, and yet she tried, tried so hard that it brought her to that sobbing mess, because she _loved him so much it hurt_.

She was right; it _was_ pathetic.

And yet, she had made him falter.

Maybe it struck a wrong cord with him, as he was done with this incessant talk about love; maybe he appreciated her feelings and intentions, no matter how baseless they were; and maybe he felt some strange sort of relief that Sakura was still as he remembered, still as determined to be his no matter how much and how hard he pushed her away; but of one thing he was certain: Her words had been a declaration of her intent to not let him fight Naruto, no matter the costs.

This time Kakashi was in no condition to intervene, and maybe they would truly break her if she got in the way of this battle that was inevitable, no matter how much she wished it wasn't so. He couldn't let her stop him, couldn't let anyone stop him, and that was what mattered the most, but he still saw no reason to let her simply throw her life away.

He didn't want her, the least broken out of all of them, to die just because she couldn't accept the way things were now. Sakura was the only one of team 7 whom he believed still had a chance at happiness, and he didn't want to see them lose this flicker of hope, nor did he want her to have the love she felt be corrupted into something putrid, something as vile as what he still held within himself.

This was what he had meant with 'revolution'. He wanted a world different from the one he and others had grown up with; one in which people wouldn't have to be martyrs to save people who would always think of them as monsters; one in which orphans weren't born out of people's greed; one in which no one would suffer like him.

Sakura's death had no purpose in what he was trying to do; in fact, it went against it, so there was no way that he was going to let her throw herself in between Naruto and him again.

He would knock her unconscious, shred her love for him to pieces, make her hate him if he had to, because he knew that she would be able to survive this much, and she would find what neither him, nor Kakashi or Naruto ever could.

As Sasuke risked a glance at her over his shoulder, he tried his best to keep his face stony in spite of her pitiful appearance. He had to be the perfect actor, had to be as good as his brother had been and make her hate him for her own sake.

This time, he couldn't falter.

"You are… such an annoyance."

* * *

><p>After reading a facebook post of a guy who I think used to like me and listening a song about love (I think it was painfully fitting; a translation from Portuguese for the first verses would be "My love, this is the last prayer to save your heart"), I found it in myself to stop being so angry at both Sasuke and Sakura for the events of the last chapter and analyze their actions, and so I wrote this. It isn't really in defense of against Sasusaku, more like "ok, so Sasuke at least doesn't want her to get herself fucking killed" thought, but I guess you could see it as either one of them.<p>

But I'm fairly sure I'll be corrected on at least some of my expectations  
>Honestly, I feel like this is my riskier fanfiction yet, and critics are appreciated. I just wrote what I felt, and it hurt.<p>

This series is going to be the end of me.


End file.
